Unheard songs by sixties band The Fortunes found in trunk



The Pritchard brothers aim to re-release some of the music found on the tapes in the trunk
Unreleased songs by the Birmingham band The Fortunes have been discovered in a trunk in an outhouse.
The group had success in the UK and the US during the sixties and seventies with tracks including You've Got Your Troubles and Here it Comes Again.
The three sons of guitarist Barry Pritchard, who died in 1999, found tapes containing 150 unheard songs.
Steve Pritchard said: "We just couldn't believe some of the stuff we were hearing once we managed to play it."
The trunk was found in an outhouse at Steve's house in Tamworth.
Along with his brothers, Nick and Sean, they took the reel-to-reel tapes to BBC engineers at the Mailbox in Birmingham who put the tracks on to CDs for them.
"It's tremendously special for us, it's something else to remember him by," said Nick.
'Pulled on heartstrings'
What we want to do now, because we're so blown away by the material, is to get it out there for his legacy and for other people to enjoy the music."
That process has already begun with the track Everybody Needs A Dream, which was written by Barry Pritchard and originally performed by bandmate George McAllister.
The brothers have asked Wolverhampton harmony band D'votion to re-record the song and make it available as a digital download.
D'votion lead singer Paul Smith said: "The past history and story of the song pulled on our heartstrings."
"We didn't know much about the Fortunes, we'd heard the name, but we went on to YouTube to find as much material as possible and thought wow, they sound like us but in the seventies."
The song has been released as an unofficial Olympic & Paralympic anthem, and had its first ever play on the BBC WM Introducing show on Saturday.
Pritchard said: "I think Dad would be delighted with what we're doing with the song. He'd be absolutely blown away because he loved vocal harmonies."
The Fortunes originally formed in Birmingham in the early sixties and first came to prominence when pirate radio station Radio Caroline adopted their single Caroline as a theme tune.
After a lull in the mid-sixties, they reinvented themselves in the seventies and had chart success in the UK with tracks including Freedom Come, Freedom Go and Storm in a Teacup.
The band, which now includes Coventry musician Bob Jackson, still tours and plays live around the UK.